I just had an incredible weekend in Los Angeles. It was the final lap of my off-season and I made the most of it. After all the fun I’ve had over the past 6 weeks, I’m exhausted! Delightfully exhausted, and really excited to get back into the grind. The trip to SoCal was prompted by Abby getting an interview at UCLA. Basically I was invited along as chauffer and activity coordinator for a weekend of fun. And it was!

Thursday we walked around Venice Beach and fulfilled our desire to smell some salty air and get our feet wet in the ocean. After that we met up with my college buddy Mark Backman for his birthday party in Hermosa Beach.

Friday morning I drove Abby to her interview, hung out at a local espresso bar for a bit, then met up with Peggy McDowell-Cramer, who you may remember as an occasional guest blogger on this site, a 16-time Ironman, and an extraordinary person who I met at my first Age Group National Championships in Kansas City. She took me to the Westwood pool and we swam together. I was just going to play in the water, but she made me do a real set. In return, I made her finish that set and go faster than she thought she could.

After the swim Peggy made me lunch and we chatted until it was time to pick up Abby from UCLA. From there we checked out Santa Monica’s Pier, rode the ferris wheel, shopped some, and had a Sushi dinner (these are all things we can’t do well in Colorado). The only part of the day that didn’t rock was the LA traffic, which is terrible.

Saturday Abby and I went to the Getty Villa museum near Malibu. There was a Picasso exhibit that showed his earlier works. It was cool to see how he started drawing classic antiquities, then slowly began to dissect his paintings as he developed cubism. The art, however, was not the reason for going to the Getty Villa. The museum itself is gorgeous!

From there we spent some time at the beach in Malibu, had dinner with Peggy and her husband Pat (I finally got to hear the story of how Peggy’s sailboat sank and she spent 15 hours in San Francisco Bay before being rescued. I wouldn’t be able to do the story justice, but I wish I’d had a tape recorder so that I could share it with you. Remarkable.)

Saturday night we went to a comedy show at The Improv in West Hollywood. They sat us in front and we ended up being a pretty big part of the show. The comedian, Ian Bagg,  struck gold, an Olympic rifle shooter, triathlete, the owner of True Religion jeans, Snoop’s agent, and a poor couple on their first date made up the front row of the audience. It was among the funniest standup comedy acts I’ve seen.

Sunday it poured the entire day in LA. We sat around and watched movies in the morning, then went to an organ concert, which was remarkable. The pipe organ at the Walt Disney center (picture on left) is a piece of art in itself. Plus, I never realized how much work goes into playing an organ. It looks like a serious workout, just the foot solo alone was impressive, but playing four keyboards, and fifth on your feet takes an incredible amount of talent. I was impressed.

Again with Disney, the concert was icing. The real treat was to see the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which is a sculpture by itself. It was a great way to finish a weekend in Los Angeles. Abby and I were both craving some culture after spending so much time in Colorado Springs, and LA delivered.

Now, back to kicking my butt at swimming biking and running. I’m sick of off-season, time to get faster!

After Guatape I flew straight to Seattle. It’s always hard going home during the season, or anytime really. Whenever I travel someplace for an extended period of time I try to get into a training routine as quickly as possible. (The routine makes training take less time, you have a time for each workout set, you know where to run and where to swim and you have a typical bike course, so the day goes more smoothly and you miss fewer workouts than if you’re constantly looking for lap swim, looking for a new run route and trying to find a group to ride with.) But in Seattle there are so many variables that get in the way of being able to jump into a routine that I end up having to adjust my schedule for each individual day. First, I’m only home a couple times this year, so I need to see the dentist, see my friends, spend time with my 18 month old nephew, spend time with my mom, my dad, my friends, visit my favorite bike shops… And then there’s the issue of transportation. My parents have two cars, mine is in Colorado, so if they’re gone all day I’m stuck at home, which isn’t exactly close to anything. (My parents moved out of the city right before I went to college. I hate the suburbs.) The bike trail is closed for reconstruction by my house as well, which means there are no soft surfaces to run on from my parent’s house – I need a car to get to the state park. What I’m getting at is that visiting home is a cluster*&^% of compounding logistical problems that make it really hard to settle into any kind of routine. So I don’t, and it always ends up being a great time.

My first day in Seattle was the quietest. Just my parents and myself. My sister and brother-in-law (BIL) were working and the nephew was in daycare (they all live in the same house), so I was able to sleep in, do some light training and then head to swim practice with Cascade Swim Club. It was great. Then next day was also quiet, except the nephew was at home with my mom, and I had to finish training super early because my massage therapist refuses to make an appointment after 3pm (he’s good enough that I don’t really care, but he’s also busy enough that I won’t tell you his name unless you promise not to schedule while I’m in town). It was the Thursday before the Monroe Pan American Cup that all hell broke loose. My aunt and uncle came into town with my two cousins, and Tommy Zaferes arrived and was staying with my family for the Monroe race. Rory and Mojdeh also came over to see me, as they just moved to Seattle from Boulder and it had been over a month since I’d been able to visit them. So just to clarify, I was trying to rest and prepare for an ITU continental cup with seven adults, two teenagers, and an 18 month old child living under the same roof and two very close friends making frequent visits, and everyone seeming bummed when I skipped out on the party for a swim/bike/run. It was awesome.

The first day with everyone in the house my cousin, Boomer, came with Tommy and me to the state park for a run. I thought it would be a learning experience for a 17-year-old surfer from Hawaii to try to hang with us, even for an easy run, and it was. Boomer was shocked when we told him that in the entire triathlon we don’t ever stop, walk, or otherwise take a breather. My other cousin, Caitie, was smarter and stayed home.

The day before Monroe the beautiful clear weather Seattle had experienced my first few days back changed and became grey rainy crud. It finally felt like home. Tommy and I did a course preview and attended the prerace meeting where, I have to admit, I was a little surprised to see that Hunter Kemper was actually present. Hunter’s been having such a great season, I thought he’d stick to world cups and the Lifetime series. It was good to see him though, as I feel like I learn a little from every race I do with him. He just exudes experience. Everyone in the field watches Hunter when he races, and Hunter – even as a marked man – is always in the right place at the right time.

Everyone competing in Monroe seemed to agree that for a first year race it was done incredibly well. The course, while boring, was safe and quite spectator friendly. The swim was in a small lake that could have been confused for a flooded drainage ditch (only with clean water), the bike ride took us out and back on the main road along side the lake and featured three 180s and two 90 degree turns on every pancake flat lap, the run – also flat – was four laps on a paved path around the lake that totaled 10.4 kilometers. It was not a course for breakaways. The one unknown going into the race was the quality of the swim field. There were more people I would classify as “super swimmers” in Monroe than any other race I’ve done. Zaferes, McClarty, McCartney, Darling, and Bird are all people who routinely win swim primes over the slightly slower – though often better on land – swimmers like Potts, Dye, and Kemper. Even with a wetsuit we all knew it would be tough to keep up with those guys.

The swim started off fast. Tommy helped me improve my beach starts by having me practice over and over the day before the race, so I was able to get a pretty good leap off the line. I broke out and was almost instantly in third behind Zaferes and McClarty. I stayed right there with only Bird passing me in the first lap. McCartney got ahead at some point and Tommy and I lost those guys feet and led in a large pack about 20 seconds down from the three leaders. Tommy had a terrible transition and lost the lead group, Hunter was right next to me out of the water and with his help we instantly caught the super swimmers within a kilometer from T1. The lead pack became 12 guys with a small lead over the next pack of five that was mainly guys who struggled getting off their wetsuits. 12 to 5 is not really an even race and our lead grew significantly without any of us really pushing that hard. There were a few feeble attempts to get away, but on that course it would have taken a superhero, or someone that nobody cared about (perhaps a wooden leg?) to get away. I followed Hunter’s lead. He and I have talked a little about working together, so I asked if he wanted to try anything, but he confirmed that it was smartest just to wait. I still spent my share of energy at the front. I hate leaches. So I felt good about taking the lead into T2 next to Hunter. We racked and I popped on my KRuuz way faster than Kemper (take that old man!) so I had the edge on the field starting the run. Rory was there wearing his “I [heart] BC” t-shirt that my buddy Tai made for us, and as I started the run with Hunter he was yelling “GO BEN, STAY WITH HIM, STAY WITH HIM, STAY WITH HIM!!!!” I tried to stay with Hunter as he came by me, I tried as hard as I could to run as fast as he was. I’m sure I was going well beyond any speed I’ve maintained in a workout, and I could only hang for 400 meters. After that I just tried to keep the gap from growing too rapidly, and in doing so I put about 10 seconds onto a group of four runners by the second kilometer. I was now being hunted by a pack and I was out in the wind by myself. I kept running, for once I was actually in the race, I had put down the start speed I didn’t think I had and it put me in position to do what I love: RACE!!! At the end of the first lap that group of six lost three people to the penalty board (Personally I think the ITU should stop changing the sport through the advent of new penalty-worthy rules and let the sport change through allowance of tactics like what the Brits did at the Euro Championships this year.) but I was gaining ground on them ever so slowly. On the second lap I had 20 seconds, on the third it was 25, but the group was only two. On the fourth lap Andrew Russell dropped the rest of them and closed the gap on me to just under 20 seconds. All the while, we all lost over two minutes to Kemper. I finished second with Andrew behind me for third.

At the finish I was greeted by a massive group of friends and family and an asthma attack that almost caused me to pass out. I’m not sure how I made it through the final lap without being able to breath, but I was certainly glad the EMTs were at the finish line to hold me up and give me oxygen until I could breath normally. I’ve never had an asthma attack like that before, but now that I have I feel like I’m officially past the point of no return on the nerd spectrum. Seriously, I wear glasses, I’m good at math and science and now I need an inhaler? Where’s my calculator watch? Oh wait; I have one with GPS instead.

The award ceremony was also a highlight thanks to all the supporters present. When I stood up on the podium a large segment of the crowd started chanting, “COLLINS, COLLINS, COLLINS…” When Hunter stood up there was polite clapping, and after it quieted down he turned to my fan section and asked, “where’s my cheer for first?” To which they responded, “COLLINS, COLLINS, COLLINS!” He can run two minutes faster, but he can’t win the hometown crowd.

Tomorrow I race the Edmonton World Cup. I’m here with my parents, and I’m hoping I can convince all of Paula Findlay’s hometown friends to come cheer for me. I wonder if they have t-shirts to show their support? Maybe they could call themselves the “PF-gang”.

Click the thumbnails below for more pics from Monroe. A HUGE thanks to my BIL, Matthew Lamb, for being my star photographer at the event. All the photos are from him.

I’m here in Edmonton, the capitol of Alberta, looking over the past few weeks down south. I’m really enjoying myself this year, and the past three weeks have been no exception. After Cartagena I flew to Guatape, a small mountain town near Medellin in Colombia. The week between races felt like an eternity because there was very little to do. The town of Guatape is beautiful. One of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and I loved riding my bike through the mountains. Guatape is in the middle of a man made lake where every piece of land shoots skyward or drops straight down. Nothing is flat, and there is very little land suitable for building on. Most of the buildings were precariously hanging off the side of a cliff waiting for a mudslide to whisk them into the lake.

Each day in Guatape I would eat breakfast with Arturo Garza and the twins from Puerto Rico, Melissa and Militza Rios (yes they look the same and have names that are very similar, it took me a few days to figure it out). Sometime before lunch I would go for a bike ride and a run, and finish with an afternoon swim in the lake. Between workouts I read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (if you haven’t read it, you need to.), wrote emails, called friends through Google Voice, and slept more than a lazy house cat. By the time race day crept up to us I was more than ready to race and head home to my family. Still there were things I wanted to do in Guatape that aren’t wise before a race, and I was glad for a 10am start time so I could spend the afternoon being a tourist.

The race itself was not as I had hoped. I lead the swim at a pace I thought was quite strong, but there were still about 15 men in the lead group for the bike. I first tried an immediate breakaway, but on the first of six 1km climbs I was caught. Every time we reached a hill the group would string out, but as soon as we crested and descended the string would ball back up. I put in far more than my fare share of the work because I didn’t want the chase pack to catch us, as did fellow American Nick Vandam. We worked hard. Then, with about 200 meters to go on the bike two Spanish men came to the front. Now, race etiquette says that if you’ve been sitting in the back the entire ride, you stay in the back into T2. At the very least leaches should NEVER take their first pull at the very end and block the people who did all the work. I was irritated, but these two Spanish riders were not done being rude. One of them was racked next to me in transition, he cut me off going to my space and carelessly racked his bike by one brake lever. The rest of his bike fell sideways and hung in such a way as to block my transition box and the space for my bike. I had to stop, hold my bike, move his bike, rack my bike, and only then I was able to reach my shoes and get my helmet in to the box. By the time I had my shoes on I was already 10 seconds back from the lead runners. Start speed on the run is already my weak point, and starting from that far back took me out of the run race. I was running by myself, and not feeling particularly good. I probably couldn’t have hung with the two Spaniards (they ended up 1st and 2nd) on that particular day, but I certainly would have like to start with them and try.

I ended up 7th, which was better than the previous week’s 10th place, but still not the result I was looking for, considering I felt good and I like to think tough courses suit me well. I’ve made the mistake of working more than my share before, but at this race I really though the hills would be an equalizer, making everyone in the pack work. Still, I swam quite well and rode strong. My run was sub-par, but overall it was a good experience. I learned and raced hard, which is what it’s all about.

After the race I tried to rent a jet ski, but the price tag was more than I was willing to pay after finishing short of the prize money. I did make it to climb the stairs to the top of Guatape’s scenic rock. It reminded me of Diamond Head monument in Honolulu, though the view was nothing like Hawaii. I also got to try a local dish called Bandeja Piasa, which includes red beans, rice, pork, ground meat, pork rind, fried egg, fried plantain, chorizo, arepa (corn bread type of thing), hogao sauce, black pudding (glad I didn’t know that at the time), and avacado. I bought a t-shirt, walked through a cathedral, and took the colorful, three-wheeled taxicabs around town. I don’t often get to be a tourist, and I felt that I needed it. Sitting around for a week doing nothing didn’t seem to help me run faster either, so I was hoping that relaxing and having fun would lead to a better race just six days later back home in Washington State.

It did, but that will be my next blog post, which I’ll publish before I race the Edmonton World Cup this weekend. Below is an image gallery from Guatape, click on the images to see the full size.

I’ve been racing pretty well so far this spring, so I decided to throw my name into a few ITU Pan-American Cup races in June. My world ranking in the ITU has plummeted this year, due mainly to a lack of ITU racing on my part, from 60 to 110. It turns out you can’t hold a ranking if you don’t race, and without a high enough ranking you can’t get into big races, no matter how many people think you should be there. So I flew south to Colombia (when it’s spelled with two ‘O’s it refers to the country, rather than the school, town, or production studio) for back-to-back Pan-American Cup races. Looking at the start lists for these races is quite a bit less intimidating than a race like Saint Anthony’s or a World Cup, but there are enough people in the ranking battle that neither race is without some solid talent.

The first race was in Cartagena, a coastal port city with a wall around the inner city. The bike course went around and through a fort and through a section of the city that looked very similar to the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was a cool course and previewing it the day before the race I was really excited for a bike course that offered more than an out and back on crummy roads. The only daunting problem was the heat. I haven’t done any real specific heat training this year. I had decided at the beginning of the year to avoid races with extreme heat and focus on courses that suit me well. It wasn’t until the day before the race that I realized this would be one of the hottest races I’ve ever taken part in. The temperature was around 90 degrees, but the humidity of 70% raised the heat index to 112. Coming from 10% humidity in Colorado, my body was in shock. The water temperature didn’t help either. On Saturday I ran 3km to the race from my hotel so I could preview the swim course. By the time I got there I was drenched in sweat and downing every water source in sight. The ocean, to my surprise, was so warm that I could barely manage a 20-minute loosen-up, and I needed a few bags of water before I was ready to jog home. Still, I figured that with good fitness I would be able to manage the heat just as well as anyone else when it came to the race.

Race day was even hotter. When I stepped out of my air-conditioned hotel room it was like walking into an oven. I brought an extra bottle of ice water to drizzle over my head while I set up for the race. Before the start another athlete came to me and said, “good luck, but I don’t know that we can call this a race. It’s going to be survival.” The swim was so warm that I was content to sit in the pack and follow feet. When I started the bike I was already so hot that I skipped pulls in an attempt to regain composure. By the time the bike was half way over I had goose bumps on my legs. I had planned to attack with another athlete, but each lap we found each other and said, “Maybe next lap”. The pack rode just fast enough that nobody wanted to go it alone, but so slow that nobody was really “pulling”. With a half lap to go I finally decided to go for it. I got 25 seconds into T2, but 1km into the run I was gassed. My HR was at max, my pace was slowing rapidly, and I could barely breath the thick air. I turned my thoughts to the next aide station and focused on staying cool, too stubborn to walk, let alone drop out. I ran the slowest 10km run of my career in 39 minutes, and then collapsed into the care of two Colombian nurses who poured ice water over me and kept a constant supply of cold fluids coming my way. I was 10th. I’m not real happy with the finish, but it’s hard to blame fitness. If I had planned this race further in advance I would have been running in sweats in the middle of the day, but I had no idea that I would be faced with that kind of heat. Even my sunscreen couldn’t hold up to the weather. My back is blistered with sharp red lines around the edges of my race suit. In short, Cartagena was a bad choice for me.

Other than the race, I thought Cartagena was a cool city. The old town is a place I could have wondered through for a day, if I had the chance. Where I was staying was a younger, more beach oriented area. It was littered with expensive fast food and not many healthy restaurant options, so if I ever go back I know to stay in the older part of the city. I will say the race was well organized and they were prepared with plenty of water stations on the run (in 10km there were 20 chances to get water). I only wish there were protocol for extra water on the bike, or at least a course with some shade. An 11:45am start in weather like that is not safe for anyone.

Next up is another Colombian race, but I’m heading up into the mountains near Medellin. The town is called Guatape, and it’s nothing like Cartagena.

I just signed up for two more races in May: 5150 New Orleans on May 15th and the Capitol of Texas Triathlon (CapTex) on May 30th. It’s going to be an awesome month! Training is going very well, the weather is getting nicer, I don’t seem to be allergic to anything in Colorado (a clear nose in May is a delightful change of pace from Washington), and I don’t have to travel over an ocean any time soon. Life is good!

 

 

Here’s some photographs of the past couple months. (Just click on the image to see a bigger, uncropped version.) It’s been a nice Spring so far.

After racing in London, this is how the majority of the US Team was feeling…

From the left: Matt Chrabot (51st), Jenna Shoemaker (40th), Chris Foster (53rd), Manny Huerta (DNF), Ben Collins (DNF) – not pictured, Kevin Collington (DNF). Clearly this was not our best effort. We’ll have to make up for it in Budapest next month, but, until then, this picture will be my motivation to stay focused.

Here’s some pictures from Hamburg. Katie Baker took them. I have yet to ask the right people for pictures taken by the pros. Perhaps I’ll ask after London so I can get them all in one go around.

Tomorrow I’ll post some pictures from our London Photo Shoot. I forgot my camera, but I stole Katie’s and took a TON of pictures.
Also, tomorrow is the women’s race here in London. It starts at 1pm GMT, and will be live on Triathlon.org. Go there a bit early because you have to create a login to watch the live stream. For those of you in the US, 1pm is 5am PDT, 8am EDT.
Sunday will be my race. We start at 4pm, and will also be live on triathlon.org – 8am PDT, 11am EDT.